


Kintsugi

by thesometimeswarrior



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Canon Compliant, Communal Healing, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:41:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24332245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/thesometimeswarrior
Summary: The elation lasts—and it’sreal—but it’s not the only thing that they feel, after.If Corruption leaves scars—external ones—and, if, as rumor has it, Corruption’s not nearly as devastating asthis, it stands to reason that this would leave scars too. Not external ones, not beyond a small crack in the reconstructed Gemstone, not for most of them—Yellow Diamond is powerful and skilled, as dexterous now as she was once destructive. But scars nonetheless.Portraits of the Un-Shattered.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 41





	Kintsugi

The elation lasts—and it’s _real_ —but it’s not the only thing that they feel, after. 

If Corruption leaves scars—external ones—and, if, as rumor has it, Corruption’s not nearly as devastating as _this_ , it stands to reason that this would leave scars too. Not external ones, not beyond a small crack in the reconstructed Gemstone, not for most of them—Yellow Diamond is powerful and skilled, as dexterous now as she was once destructive. But scars nonetheless.

And the ones who do sport larger external scars are those unfortunate few of whom some pieces were lost. Yellow Diamond compensates, of course, when she reconstructs them. But a prosthetic shard, however artfully crafted, however painstakingly placed, is not the same as one’s own piece. The forms these rebuilt-but-not-quite-whole Gemstones project have gaps. They’re functional, and _themselves_ , and in many cases any abnormalities are not even noticeable to an outside observer. But they’re _there_. And they have different effects on each Gem who possess them. A foot that’s at an awkward angle, so that the Pearl who used to be the most graceful dancer is clumsy. A hand that’s just too long and thin, such that the Quartz can no longer use it to carry anything. Eyes that are crossed, such that it’s more difficult to see than it was before.

But even those of them whose scars aren’t physical—whose reconstructed stones are missing no pieces—are not quite whole. 

For one, there are the gaps in all of their recalls. Not only of the actual moment of their respective shatterings, (which some of them have been fortunate enough to forget, but others _remember_ ), but of other moments too, random moments. Sometimes, they’re able to piece together something like memories from others’ accounts, but in other instances, these moments are just _gone_ , fallen between their cracks to somewhere irretrievable.

Another: Those Gems pieced back together from forced shard-Fusion experiments feel a strange simultaneous longing and repulsion for each other, after so many millennia of having their shards intermingled and smashed and soldered together. They find each other. Sometimes, they move to embrace—especially those who had fought on the same side of the War, so long ago now—but when they touch, they recoil. 

“We’re like _magnets_ ,” a former rebel and newly reconstructed Peridot notes, once. “Do you think the experiment _polarized_ us? Except…one of us keeps switching poles.”

“I dunno if it’s that technical,” a Topaz responds, and then they don’t say any more about it.

* * *

Most of them settle on Earth. It’s easier. 

Homeworld is different now, of course. They are no longer be shattered for failing to meet certain standards—aesthetic, functional, or otherwise. Obviously. But things have not changed so much that they do not invite states. (The natures of these stares vary. Sometimes Gems gawk. In other instances, they look at them with pity. Both of these are unbearable.)

Things are different on Earth. They always have been, on that planet of Rebel Quartzes and Rebel Diamonds, Pearls who owned themselves before that was Law, Perma-Fusions, and human-Gem hybrids. And since the beginning of Era 3, that ethos has only intensified. Un-Corrupted Gems live happily with horns and discolorations on full-display. Off-colors too. 

These oddities are commonplace, even _embraced_ on Earth. Pink Diamond would have found them charming, someone says, and after all, this was her colony.

“Rose Quartz,” a onetime rebel Agate corrects. “And it wasn’t _her_ colony. She just lived here. And loved it. Just like the rest of us.”

“There’s nothing _charming_ about this!” a Ruby snarls. She hadn’t even been a _rebel_ , and yet she had been lumped in—literally—with them. “About what they did to us!”

Gems don’t stare or gawk. There’s sympathy, sometimes, when they want it, but never any pity. Who should pity them, on this planet full of Gems that had been corrupted, or hunted for most of their existences? Everyone here has a strange history. If there’s sympathy, it’s a sympathy that comes with _knowing_.

“You don’t know what it’s like to be _shattered_!” a Quartz shouts, once, in refutation of this idea. “Or to have your shards forced together with someone else’s!”

Lapis doesn’t argue. “That’s true. But I know what it’s like to be hurt for thousands of years. To be broken. And trapped. And stuck in a Fusion that you don’t want to be in. It’s _torture_. And it sucks that you know that too.”

* * *

Some of them have forgotten the actual moment of their shattering.

Some of them _remember_.

* * *

Not all of them had been Fusion experiments. Most of them were—at least, most of them had been recovered enough to be reconstructed. (The only shards the Diamonds had had any impetus to keep had been the ones Yellow Diamond had used for Fusion experiments. The others—save for a chance fortunate few—had been discarded, were _gone_ now…only existed as floating space debris in some corner of a universe too vast and spread out to ever be found…too spread out to ever be _conscious_.)

It’s a different sort of trauma, all that alone-ness, being cut apart even from yourself, with no pieces of anyone else to serve as a distraction, as even an illusion of consciousness. And, in her worst moments, the Topaz almost begrudges the others their forced Fusions.

“I…It wasn’t _better_!” a Quartz exclaims, once, when the Topaz finally manages to express some of this out loud. “It was _awful_...”

“I know,” the Topaz responds, hugging her knees. “I know.”

“But…” the Quartz sighs. “I’ll bet what happened to you wasn’t fun, either.”

( _Some of them remember_.) “No.”

* * *

“This sucks,” the Ruby snarls. “They stuck our pieces all together, and we didn’t have any choice! And…now...we’re _still_ all stuck together!”

“We’re not, we—”

“We _are_! Where else could we go? Who else would accept us, who else could _understand_ …”

“But that’s a different kind of stuck, isn’t it?” another Quartz insists. “No one’s _forcing_ us to be here. We’re _choosing_ to be around people who accept us now, right? Who help us learn to…”

“To _what_?”

“To be _whole_.” A pause. “We’re learning to be _whole_ again.”

* * *

They gather, as a group sometimes, those of them on Earth. Sometimes the Gems that teach at Little Homeschool, put on classes specifically for them.

On one such occasion, it’s Garnet who stands before them, with all that strength and assuredness that those who had fought by her side during the War remember, and which all of them—even those that won’t admit it—admire.

She grins as she looks at each of them in turn, where they sit hugging their damaged-and-rebuilt forms, and the expression seems to radiate some of that utterly grounded joy to them too. 

“We always used to say,” she begins. “That there was something about the Earth. Something that set Gems _free_. That’s still _true_. Because here…” and she hugs herself, wraps her arms in a caress around her torso. “We know how to look out for each other. We always have. On Earth, we’ve all got each other!”

(For some of them, listening, this line rings familiar for reasons they can’t understand, like a dream half-remembered. It’s grounding. Hopeful.)

* * *

In another such gathering, it’s Lapis who presents. 

Lapis isn’t one for lectures, isn’t one for impassioned speeches. She much prefers to work with her hands, and so she shows them her meep-morps.

“There’s a sculpting technique I learned from some humans,” she says, one afternoon. “Sort of…a repurposing. When a sculpture breaks, instead of just _fixing_ it, the morp-ist takes the pieces, and puts them back together with golden lacquer that shines just as brightly as the pieces themselves. It doesn’t look the way it did before. They’re…” She pauses, looking for the right word. “They’re not trying to _hide_ what happened to the sculpture. Whatever happened to it is a _part_ of it now. It’s _different_ than it was. But that doesn’t mean it’s less beautiful. It’s just that it’s something _new_.”

“Is it…the sculpture…is it _whole_?” a Ruby asks.

“I think so.” Lapis nods. “Just…in a different way than it was before. Different colors shine though.”

* * *

They _feel_ their cracks, sometimes, feel all their scars, and each one is like a rupture, painful and deep and inescapable fractures in their very cores. But these are not the only thing they feel, after. 

Sometimes, they can hold each other. And when they do, when they feel it, it’s like golden lacquer, like elation, beautiful in all the ways they wouldn’t expect, drawn together by things they never expected to find beautiful.

They whisper: _We’re beautiful._

They whisper: _We’re whole. Each one of us. All on our own._

They whisper: _We’ve all got each other._

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this piece, Kintsugi, refers to the traditional Japanese art form, that Lapis describes toward the end here. I am far from an expert in this form, but I am really drawn to this concept, and I thought it worked here.
> 
> \--
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! I love comments!


End file.
